That is a matter between Severus Snape and myself
by Possum132
Summary: Harry Potter and Severus Snape keep an assignation one evening, to discuss the Dark Lord’s most dangerous followers. Mad Eye Moody keeps watch. Follow up to The better for him, the worse for Severus Snape.
1. Chapter 1: Harry Potter

**That is a matter between Severus Snape and myself**

_This is just a playful little yarn that follows on from the rapprochement between our heroes in "So much the better for him, so much the worse for Severus Snape". Not much happens, because nothing ever does happen in happily ever after stories._

**Chapter 1: Harry Potter**

He'd watched the Dursleys packing for a while, he would have liked to use his magic to help them, but he wasn't of age yet and he wouldn't put it past Rufus Scrimgeour to use it as an excuse to lean on him if he broke the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery again - and if he used magic it would only freak them out, anyway. And they'd made it clear that they didn't want his help, they'd made it clear that they wanted nothing to do with him, so he'd made himself a cheese sandwich and retreated into his bedroom.

Aunt Petunia had started packing the day after he told her and Vernon about the stuff that happened last summer – the Brockdale bridge and the hurricane in the West Country – and the things that have happened since then, told them that it was Voldemort's work, and that Voldemort would send his Death Eaters to kill every living thing at Number 4, Privet Drive the moment that Harry Potter turned seventeen. He'd imagined the front page of the _Daily Prophet_, the twinkling, black and white photograph of the Dark Mark hanging over the burning wreckage of the house, and the headlines about the death of the Chosen One's Muggle family – and he'd told the Dursleys to get out of England, to get as far away as they could.

Petunia hadn't cried and Vernon hadn't turned purple, hadn't swelled up like a bullfrog and blustered – Vernon had looked strangely subdued and grey, and he hadn't even raged and protested about having to take Dudley out of Smeltings.

He'd realised then that this is what Petunia had feared from the day that he'd been left on their doorstop as a baby - and it had burned that he can't do anything to protect his own family, that he can't save the Dursleys, because in a few days he'll become a hunted fugitive himself, and as soon as he's of age, all hell is going to break loose. Voldemort's plans are to declare open war against the Ministry, break the Death Eaters out of Azkaban, raid Gringotts, stage mass Muggle-killings - and the Boy Who Lived will be hunted by dozens of wizards whose names and faces he doesn't even know, because Voldemort wants him alive, but not necessarily in good condition.

For a while he'd stayed in his bedroom, lying on his bed and watching Hedwig dozing on the top of the wardrobe, every now and then she'd open her huge yellow eyes and blink affectionately at him before drifting back to sleep – but when he'd heard Petunia screaming at Dudley about the hoard of videos and magazines she'd found stashed under the loose floorboard in Dudley's room, he'd fled into the garden, because how rattled must Petunia be to shout at her darling Dudders like that? So he'd slouched on the garden bench he'd painted in the holidays after his first year at Hogwarts, it hasn't been painted since and the paint is starting to peel. He'd idly picked at the paint blisters, and realised then that he hadn't even asked where the Dursleys were going – he hadn't asked and they hadn't told him, because it is better if he doesn't know, it's better if he operates, like Snape, on a need-to-know basis. No, he didn't know where they were going, but he hoped for their sakes that it was somewhere very far away – Australia, perhaps, or Patagonia.

He'd asked Snape if Snape could do anything for them, if Voldemort's right-hand man could find a way to get his Dark Lord to leave the Dursleys alone, and Snape had looked bored – though he was beginning to understand Snape well enough to know when boredom was just a mask for anger – and said "The Dark Lord will not be persuaded, and I am not stupid enough to attempt it." And it had given him a jolt to realise just how much he frightens Snape now that they both know what he is; he'd thought, Severus Snape is afraid to show his temper to either of his masters.

Severus Snape ... he's on first name terms with Snape now, sort of, because Snape calls him "Harry" – sometimes - but he doesn't think he'll ever call Snape "Severus", and Snape seems perfectly comfortable with "Snape". And what had Tobias Snape and Eileen Prince been thinking of, to lumber a kid with a god-awful name like "Severus"? He'd remembered his own primary school, he'd been alternately tormented and ignored, but at least no one had given him a hard time over his name - after all, he did share it with a prince of the House of Windsor.

It's hard to believe sometimes that only a month ago he'd called Snape "sir" or "professor", it's only a month since he'd served his last Saturday morning detention in Snape's office. But the Harry who'd attended Hogwarts, played Quidditch, snogged Ginny, hated Snape - and been talked about as possible Head Boy material, at least until that awful business with Draco Malfoy in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom – was another Harry, a Harry who'd ceased to exist on the night that Dumbledore died.

He still has nightmares about that night, nightmares in which he sees the flash of green light and Dumbledore toppling off the tower, and the only way he can cope is to think - Voldemort killed Dumbledore, and Draco and Snape were just the tools he used to do the job. Poor bloody Draco, who'd wanted to be a Death Eater, just like his dear old dad - right up to the point where Draco realised that he didn't have the nerve or the ability for the Killing Curse. And poor bloody Snape, sometimes he thinks that Snape is hardly human anymore, he's just some kind of vengeful automaton.

Well, Draco is safe now, safe from both the Aurors and from his Dark Lord - he's safe in a wooden box in an unmarked grave on Azkaban, dosed with the Draught of Living Death, and there he'll stay until it's all over. The Muggle newspapers had reported it as a bank robbery that had gone wrong, one of the thieves had got away and the other had been shot dead by police, but the _Daily Prophet_ had told a different story. The headlines had screamed **DRACO MALFOY DEAD, SNAPE STILL ON THE RUN**, and made it look like a triumph for the Ministry that one of Albus Dumbledore's killers was dead. But he'd known better, and he'd thought - Dumbledore would have been pleased, he wanted to save Draco, he knew Draco wasn't a murderer ...

But he feels anger as well as grief when he thinks about Dumbledore, when he thinks - why didn't you tell me _everything?_ Why didn't you tell me about the Unbreakable Vow? And why did you chose to die, why did you abandon me!

And the anger is fanned to white heat by the fact that he has never been so alone before, by the fact that he's carrying the burden of a secret he's not sure he can share even with Ron or Hermione – and if the Ministry finds out what he is, if Rufus Scrimgeour finds out what the prophecy means, he'll be thrown into Azkaban, just like Sirius, without even a trial.

That damned prophecy, Dumbledore had said that he could choose to turn his back on the prophecy, but he doesn't believe that any more, the thing will follow him like a bloodhound until it catches up with him. _And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal_, he knows what that means now, he knows what the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead means, but what about the _power the Dark Lord knows not_, what the hell can that be?

Dumbledore had said it was love, but what good was love? Everyone who'd loved him and who'd dared to stand between him and Voldemort was dead. His father, his mother, his godfather, the Headmaster, they'd loved him, and they'd stood between him and Voldemort, and now they were all dead. And his "saving people thing" – his "Gryffindor hero complex", as Snape called it - was a weakness, not a strength. Voldemort had used it against him twice already, and he'd use it against him again if he got the chance.

Sprawling on the garden bench in the afternoon sun, brooding over the prophecy, brooding over the Horcruxes, he'd remembered how his heart had swelled with happiness and relief that Christmas at Order Headquarters when Ginny had persuaded him that he wasn't being possessed by Voldemort. And it is a bitter pill to swallow that she was wrong; and surely Ginny wouldn't want to be near him if she thought that she might see Voldemort staring out of his eyes, if she thought that their vivid green might turn suddenly to scarlet, with catlike slits for pupils.

Ginny! Thinking of Ginny _hurts_ – and if Voldemort ever tries to hurt Ginny again ... he hadn't felt angry, because this goes beyond anger, but he'd shifted on the bench, clenched his fist around his wand – his wand is never far from his hand these days, and the gun that Snape taught him to use is tucked into a pocket of his jacket – and thought, the _power the Dark Lord knows not_, it must be something really toxic, it must be something really deadly if even you don't know about it, Tom Riddle, no wonder Snape watches his step around me. You made a Horcrux out of something of Gryffindor's, alright, but not in the way that you intended, and I promise you, Tom, if you ever hurt Ginny again, if you ever hurt any of the people I love, I will take you apart - I don't know how, but I promise you, I _will_.

And then his fury with Dumbledore had died away, because the war against Voldemort is a game of chess, the less valuable piece is sacrificed for the sake of the game – hasn't he known that since Ron got him through McGonagall's giant chess set in first year? And Dumbledore hasn't left him alone, he's left him with one last protector, the one that Voldemort will never suspect, Voldemort's most loyal, most faithful supporter ... and his last protector in dire need.

He knows now where Snape stands, he knows where his loyalties lie - the incident with Snape's Boggart in the kitchen of Number 12 Grimmauld Place had established that beyond a shadow of a doubt. The Boggart had taken the shape of Voldemort and neither he nor Snape had realised what it was until he'd raised his wand – and it had turned into _his_ Boggart, turned into a Dementor. And he's been wondering about his own Boggart, Remus had thought that his Boggart was a Dementor because what he feared most was fear itself - but now he's wondering whether he fears something worse, whether in some way he's always understood that a fragment of Voldemort's soul is bound to his. He'd remembered what he'd said to Dumbledore when Dumbledore told him that he could speak Parseltongue because Voldemort had transferred some of his powers to him – _Voldemort put a bit of himself in me_ – and he'd thought, maybe what I fear most is the loss of my soul, and even if I'd had been Sorted into Slytherin, the prophecy would have been fulfilled, because Dark Lords do not tolerate rivals.

And then he'd realised that it was starting to get dark and Mad-Eye was coming to escort him to a rendezvous with Snape that evening, so he'd gone upstairs for a shower and a change of clothes, trying not to get into too much of a stew over why Snape wanted to see him. It must be something really important for Snape to risk a meeting with him - is it news of the Horcruxes? Has Snape found out where Helga Hufflepuff's cup is hidden? Or has Voldemort finally missed Slytherin's locket?

He knows now that the locket they'd come across when they were cleaning out the drawing room of Grimmauld Place is the Horcrux, even though he hadn't found it hidden in Kreacher's smelly little nest under the boiler in the cupboard off the kitchen, as he'd hoped. He'd scuffled around amongst the mess of rags, and then he'd looked up at Snape and thought, I won't let Dumbledore die for nothing, and I have to do whatever it takes to fulfil the prophecy, even if it's an ordeal for both of us.

So he'd told Snape to do it, told him to use Legilimency to dredge up the faint, faded memory of the locket he'd only glanced at briefly before throwing it into a rubbish sack. He'd stared directly into Snape's eyes, ignored the raised wand, and held nothing back – he'd endured the rush of memories of that summer at Order Headquarters until Snape found the one they were looking for, the memory of the afternoon they'd emptied the glass-fronted cabinets. The locket had been grimy - nothing like as bright and shiny as the object he'd seen Hepzibah Smith display so proudly to Tom Riddle - but the ornate, serpentine S was unmistakable.

It hadn't been easy to deal with, the knowledge that he'd held the Horcrux that Dumbledore died for in his hands – and he hadn't known how precious it was; he'd tossed it into the sack with all the other creepy bits of junk out the cabinets without a second thought, so he'd just sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands, while Snape made another cup of tea. But Snape had pointed out that the Order didn't throw dangerous Dark Arts artefacts into a Muggle dustbin, they went to Mad-Eye Moody for safe disposal, and he'd felt hope again.

Mad-Eye Moody ... the only other person in the know about Snape, because he hasn't even told Hermione and Ron that he was wrong about Snape, he hasn't told even them that Snape is Dumbledore's man through and through - and he'd felt like a right pompous git when he found himself using Dumbledore's words and telling Mad-Eye that his reasons for trusting Snape are _a matter between Severus Snape and myself_. So they'd called in Mad-Eye, and he'd never seen the locket, so now everything depends on whether Mundungus Fletcher will be able to shed some light on its whereabouts when he finishes his stint in Azkaban. And Dung will be falling over himself to be helpful, because Mad-Eye Moody will be asking the questions ...

When he came downstairs, Mad-Eye had been prowling around in the sitting room, his magical eye spinning slowly in its socket, while the Dursleys huddled, terrified, on the sofa. Mad-Eye had held him firmly by the arm and they'd Apparated with dizzying speed to half a dozen locations – to shake off pursuit, as Mad-Eye had explained. It had been Side-Along Apparation, because he wasn't yet up to Apparating to a place he'd never been to before, and Side-Along Apparation was, if possible, even more stomach-churning than solo Apparation. And then they'd nipped into the Underground - he had no idea what line they were on - and finally caught a lurching Muggle bus to some dodgy part of London, a part of London where the Dursleys would never go, full of girls wearing very short skirts – the sort of girls that he suspected that Molly Weasley would call scarlet women – and men wearing leather trousers and earrings.

So now he's lurking against a wall, protected by his Invisibility Cloak and a mild Muggle-repelling charm, across the road from some joint called The Pink PussyCat Club - and he's feeling more than a little tense, because although he trusts Snape completely, he still can't like him. Every time that he feels a stirring of sympathy or pity for Snape, Snape seems to know, and to be determined to prove that even if he is on the side of the Light, he's still a complete and utter son-of-a-bitch - and he makes some sneering reference to Nymphadora Tonks, the werewolf's camp-follower, or asks Mad-Eye Moody if the Aurors ever found all the pieces of Benjy Fenwick.

But Snape is late and the knot of anxiety in his stomach is slowly tightening, because between Voldemort and the Aurors, if there is anyone less likely to make it though this alive than he is, it's Severus Snape. And he can sense Mad-Eye stirring restlessly next to him - Mad-Eye won't let him wait more than a couple of minutes, Mad-Eye takes constant vigilance really seriously ...

Then a bus stops – and when it pulls away, Snape is standing on the footpath outside The Pink PussyCat Club, so he slips off the cloak, dodges past the traffic and walks through the front door. The place is still half empty, he spots Snape immediately at a little table for two in a dark corner, next to a sign that says "Fire Exit" – and Snape is already lighting up one of his stinking Muggle cigarettes.

He drops into the chair opposite Snape, Snape nods to him, greets him with a single word, "Harry", pushes a drink that looks like a Muggle version of butterbeer across the table to him - and he thinks, this is an odd sort of a bar, all the customers seem to be men, why aren't there any women? Then he stops thinking about the other patrons because Snape is tossing a pack of Muggle playing cards on to the table.

The cards are ordinary, cheap, pasteboard playing cards, the kind of thing you can get at any Muggle newsagent, but Snape is flicking them with his wand, and he realises that they're not just cards, they must be enchanted, something like the Marauders' Map. He fans them out in his hands, and they don't show the King of Spades or the Ace of Diamonds, they're photographs, mostly of wizards, but some witches, and he realises what they are - photographs of Death Eaters! Some of the faces he's seen before, on wanted posters or in the Department of Mysteries, but he's never seen most of these Death Eaters before, or if he has, their faces have been hidden by masks - and there seem to be a lot more than the standard Muggle pack of 52. He scans the faces – the names are printed at the bottom of the cards, and there's a scrap of information about each one ... _expert in slicing hexes ... recent recruit, trained at Durmstrang ..._

Some of the names are an unpleasant shock, names that he's read in the _Daily Prophet_ – senior Ministry officials or Quidditch stars – and some of the faces he recognises from the Tri-Wizard Tournament, and then he fumbles frantically through the rest of the pack, thinking, dear god, please don't let me see Percy Weasley or Viktor Krum's face, please, not them, please don't let them have gone over to Voldemort, not Ginny's brother and the best Seeker in the world, I couldn't bear it.

He drops the cards back on the table, sagging a little with relief that the two faces he'd dreaded seeing aren't amongst them; Snape taps the cards with his wand, and they're ordinary Muggle playing cards again.

He thinks, I ought to thank Snape, I ought to say something, he's _brilliant_ – but then he realises that one face is missing from the pack that he had expected to see.

Snape reads the thought in his eyes and says, shortly, "You know what Lucius Malfoy looks like," but Snape's face is carefully expressionless, and he knows that there's something that Snape isn't telling him - and something doesn't add up. He knows what Bellatrix looks like, too, but her photograph has been included. So what's up between Draco's dad and Severus Snape?

Then he remembers Sirius making some kind of crack about Lucius Malfoy and Severus Snape, some nasty remark about Lucius Malfoy being pleased that his lap-dog is teaching at Hogwarts, and he thinks, Snape and Malfoy must have known each other since they were kids together at Hogwarts - and did Snape have _any_ friends who hadn't turned out to be Death Eaters?

And then he looks down at the table and starts shuffling the cards, for something to do, because he doesn't want Snape to see the pity in his eyes or to know that he's thinking - you poor bastard, even now you think of Lucius Malfoy as a friend, and with friends like Lucius Malfoy, who needs enemies? And I know how Tom thinks, I understand him as well as you do, and we both know that Lucius Malfoy is a dead man – he'll never leave Azkaban alive.


	2. Chapter 2: Severus Snape

**That is a matter between Severus Snape and myself**

**Chapter 2: Severus Snape**

He'd really like a cigarette, because when you've got a two pack a day habit, thirty minutes is a long time to go without a fag, and he's been lurking in the same spot for over half an hour now, protected by Moody's spare Invisibility Cloak and a mild Muggle-repelling charm, waiting for anyone who's following him to get impatient, to make a move and reveal themselves – because he doesn't take any chances with the life of the Chosen One, the weapon against the Dark Lord. And who knows if the Dark Lord really trusts him? Even after what happened on the Astronomy Tower, there's still a chance that the Dark Lord might not really trust him, still a chance that the Dark Lord might be playing with him, might be one step ahead of the game.

The Headmaster could see through an Invisibility Cloak, and he suspects that the Dark Lord can, too, but the Dark Lord wouldn't be following him personally – the Dark Lord isn't the type to keep a dog and bark himself. And probably he's just being paranoid, he's the Dark Lord's favourite now, the Dark Lord's right-hand man, and his only real competitor is Bellatrix Lestrange, the Dark Lord's right-hand woman. But his rivalry with Bella is a lot less friendly than his rivalry with Minerva had been, and he can't afford to stuff up the Azkaban mission.

Azkaban! Although he's never been to Azkaban, he knows exactly where it is – in the Orkneys, right under the noses of the Muggles at the naval base at Scarpa Flow - and he's studied the plans and memorised the location of the cells that hold the Death Eaters arrested in the Department of Mysteries, because if he wants to keep his position as the Dark Lord's favourite, the Azkaban mission has got to be a success, the Dark Lord may be pleased with him because he killed Dumbledore, but the Dark Lord is a "but what have you done for me _lately_" kind of guy. And to tell the truth, he's looking forward to it, looking forward to letting loose, using some seriously Dark Magic, and settling some old scores – and the Metamorphmagus bitch, the werewolf's camp-follower, will have to take her chances with the rest of the Azkaban garrison.

He lets himself relax a little, he's sure that no one is following him now. It hadn't been too difficult to shake Wormtail off, and Wormtail wasn't under orders from the Dark Lord anyway, the rodent was acting, ha, on his own initiative, because Wormtail thinks that he's consoling grief-stricken Narcissa Malfoy in a smart hotel in Muggle London, and the little sneak had planned to run to Lucius with the proof as soon as Lucius is out of Azkaban - and that shows how much the dirty stinking little rat is out of the loop, how much he's being kept out of the Dark Lord's plans. And if the servant who willingly gave his flesh to revive his master is so much out of favour, perhaps the Dark Lord would like to be rid of the cowardly little creep?

Hell, the Dark Lord has pretty much given him permission to do what he likes to Pettigrew, and how could Pettigrew have been such an idiot, to try to beg off the Azkaban mission when the Dark Lord has made it clear how important it is to him? Smashing Azkaban open, killing the entire garrison, and freeing his followers is the opening gambit in the Dark Lord's new strategy, it won't just be terrorism now that Dumbledore is dead, as soon as Harry Potter comes of age it will be open war against the Ministry, and everyone is expected to do their bit - or to die trying. And Pettigrew had been stupid enough to try to talk his way out of it! That had been a fatal mistake, that had made the Dark Lord think that Wormtail feared the Aurors more than he feared his master's anger. The Dark Lord had been enraged, and more importantly, he didn't trust Wormtail's loyalty any longer – and loss of the Dark Lord's trust is fatal, as fatal as screwing up the mission to retrieve the prophecy.

So although he doesn't have any express orders, it's pretty safe to say that there'll be no punishment if Wormtail has a little accident. So, yes, Wormtail _will_ have a nasty accident - not that Harry Potter needs to know the details, it will be enough for Harry to know that Wormtail is dead. And that will be a nice little birthday surprise for the kid, because Harry must have regretted a thousand times that he didn't let Black and Lupin kill the rat in the Shrieking Shack ...

Yep, Pettigrew practically signed his own death warrant when he went snivelling to the Dark Lord and tried to wriggle out of the Azkaban mission – didn't he have the wit to realise that no matter how terrified he is of the Auror Corps, that's _nothing_ to the fear he should feel for his master! And Pettigrew has taken the Dark Mark, he belongs to the Dark Lord now, and he should know from what happened to Karkaroff that the Dark Lord is no more forgiving towards a coward than he is towards a traitor. Karkaroff was a lot smarter than Pettigrew - and to give him credit, the Durmstrang recruits have had a good grounding in the basics of the Dark Arts – but Karkaroff still hadn't been smart enough to realise that if he was going to run from the Dark Lord, he needed to run a bloody long way, to the far ends of the earth.

He thinks, Karkaroff spoke Russian, Karkaroff could have found somewhere to hide himself in one of the far flung corners of the old USSR. If he'd really wanted to stay alive, Karkaroff should have buried himself in some god-forsaken place like Sakhalin - a flyspeck on the map that he wouldn't know existed himself if he hadn't read about it some book he'd got out of the Muggle public library when he was a kid, _Biggles Buries a Hatchet_ or whatever it was called.

He couldn't really feel sorry for somebody as stupid as Karkaroff, but the Dark Lord had taken his time killing Karkaroff, he'd seemed determined to prove the literal truth of that Muggle proverb, _a brave man dies but once, a coward many times_. And Wormtail had been a witness to how Karkaroff had died, Wormtail had seen the Dark Lord at work, so did the rat have a death-wish, to anger the Dark Lord by trying to get out of the Azkaban mission?

But thinking about the orders for the Azkaban mission makes him shift uneasily from one foot to another under the Invisibility Cloak, because Lucius must know that he's a half-blood, the whole of the wizarding world knows about his filthy Muggle father now - the _Daily Prophet_ had a field day with that delicious little tid-bit. And Lucius must have watched his only son and heir being buried in the unmarked grave of a criminal, there on Azkaban, within sight of the windows of the prison.

He looks at his watch, decides that it's safe to move on, and he's running late for his appointment with Harry Potter - and he needs to see him, he's got something to give Harry, something a lot more useful than Peter Pettigrew's head on a pike.

Harry-bloody-Potter, his head really gets into a mess when he thinks about Harry Potter, and it's hard to believe that it was only a month ago that Potter called him "sir" or "professor", only a month since Potter served his last Saturday morning detention in his office, only a month since his old life at Hogwarts ended – and it seems like a dream now, seventeen years of teaching at Hogwarts seems like a dream from which he's been woken, like Sleeping Beauty – but not with a kiss.

Harry Potter, he'd _hated _James Potter's spoiled, arrogant brat, but now he doesn't know how he feels about Harry Potter. He was wary around the boy, because even if the kid seems to be just another gormless teenager, he isn't – Harry Potter will have _power the Dark Lord knows not_, and that has to be something really toxic, something really deadly. Harry Potter is a walking time-bomb, one day he's going to explode and somebody is going to get very, very badly hurt.

Yes, now that he knows that Harry Potter is a Horcrux, he watches his step around the boy - because any wizard who doesn't mind their Ps and Qs around someone who shares their soul with the Dark Lord is an idiot. But he feels a little bit sorry for Harry Potter, too, because while that damned prophecy has made a mess of his life, it has really screwed up Lily's son. _And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal_, he knows what that means now, he knows what the lightning-shaped scar on Harry Potter's forehead means, and it's a lot worse than the Mark on his arm that brands him as a servant.

And he can't stop brooding over that business in the kitchen of Number 12 Grimmauld Place, when he'd opened the door to Kreacher's grubby lair, searching for Slytherin's locket, and the Dark Lord had stepped out, fixed his pitiless red eyes on Harry Potter, and said, "Truly, Severus, you are my most loyal, my most faithful servant – and you have led me to the boy."

It was only a Boggart, but he hadn't known it at the time – and neither had Potter, the boy hadn't Apparated away to safety, even when he'd shouted at him to get out of it. The kid had raised his wand, he'd been ready to take on the Dark Lord – but why? The boy had tried to save _him_, Severus Snape, and that made no sense at all, because the boy must hate him - Harry Potter would have to be seriously warped if he didn't hate the wizard who'd betrayed his mother to the Dark Lord and who'd killed Albus Dumbledore before his very eyes. He'd been furious, fucking Gryffindor heroics, how could the boy be so stupid! And he won't let Harry make the same mistake again, so he doesn't miss an opportunity to remind the boy that he's a nasty bastard – and quite capable of looking after himself.

And the kid is hopelessly soft-hearted alright, because he actually seems to care about what happens to Lily's bitch sister, her husband, and their lumpish son - even after the way they've treated him. When Harry had asked him if there was anything he could do for the Dursleys, he'd had to hide his fury behind a mask of boredom, because Harry was asking him to risk his position with the Dark Lord for the sake of the worst kind of Muggles. The Dursleys knew the boy was powerfully magical, but they'd still tried to beat the magic out of him ... and how dare a filthy Muggle raise his hand to Lily's child!

The filthy Muggles are swarming all over the pavement and blocking his path, his heart starts to race a little, because he's running late, and Harry is under instructions to get the hell out of it if he's so much as five minutes late - and Moody will see that the boy does as he's told, Moody is a hateful bastard, but he's competent ...

He's outside his destination now, a bus pulls up and disgorges half a dozen Muggles, he slips off the Invisibility Cloak, and steps inside. The place is still half empty, he chooses a table in a dark corner next to the fire exit, and orders drinks. The Muggle waiter doesn't worry him, even though his photograph has been in all the Muggle newspapers - a quick Confundus Charm will take care of a nosy Muggle. It's wizards who scare him, wizards who'd run to either the Ministry or the Dark Lord if they saw him, but a Muggle pansy bar in Soho is about the safest place in London for the second most wanted wizard in Britain to meet the Chosen One.

Harry drops into the chair opposite him, he nods to him, greets him with a single word, "Harry", pushes a drink across the table to him, tosses a pack of Muggle playing cards - the ordinary cheap kind you can buy at any newsagent, the sort of thing you'd expect to find in the pockets of a Muggle-raised half-blood - on to the table, and flicks them with his wand.

Harry fans the cards out in his hands, and they don't show the King of Spades or the Ace of Diamonds, they're photographs, mostly of wizards, but some witches – it was rather a tricky little piece of Charm work, and he's pleased with the results. He's not too proud to admit that he got the idea from the Marauders' Map, but the spell required to get them to reveal their secrets is a bit harder to crack – a combination of a wand movement and a non-verbal incantation. He leans back, enjoying his cigarette, and watching Harry scrabbling through the cards - is he looking for familiar faces, kids he'd known at Hogwarts, perhaps?

Harry lays the cards back on the table, looking somewhat shaken at the names and faces he's seen, he taps the cards with his wand, and they're ordinary Muggle playing cards again.

He looks across the table at Harry - a little disappointed that there's no word of thanks or praise - and he's surprised by the question in the boy's eyes, is the kid more observant than he'd given him credit for?

He says, shortly, "You know what Lucius Malfoy looks like," but he keeps his face expressionless, hides his feelings, and he's glad when the boy loses interest and starts shuffling the cards, because his friendship with Lucius Malfoy is none of Harry Potter's business – and Lucius won't be walking free from Azkaban prison with the rest of the faithful. His orders from the Dark Lord are to kill Lucius, to do it himself - and the only kindness he'll be able to show Lucius, the only mercy, is to kill him quickly, and before he kills him, to whisper into his ear, _Draco lives, your only son and heir still lives_.

Return to Top


	3. Chapter 3: Alastor Moody

**That is a matter between Severus Snape and myself**

**Chapter 3: Alastor Moody**

The Dursleys had stopped their packing when he walked into the house, even though he'd told them to get on with it - after all, they needed to get out of Britain as fast as they could. If he knew anything of Voldemort's methods, by five minutes past midnight on the 30th of July there wouldn't be one brick left standing on top of another at Number 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, so Harry's Muggle relatives needed to get as far away from the Death Eaters as they could – Australia, perhaps, or Patagonia, they might – _might_ – be safe there.

They'd stopped their packing and huddled together on the sofa while he waited for Harry, the poor bloody Muggles were harmless, so he'd ignored them, rolled his magical eye around – _constant vigilance_, and the house must be under continual surveillance from Ministry spies and Voldemort's agents, probably one and the same, because the rot goes right through the Ministry. Voldemort - and maybe his chief lieutenant – alone know the names of all of the Death Eaters, but he'd bet a stack of Galleons there are plenty of Ministry officials amongst them, even Aurors, and he doesn't trust anyone who isn't an Order member, he doesn't trust anyone who hadn't given Albus Dumbledore their personal oath of loyalty.

And the neatly taped and labelled cardboard boxes piled by the front door are a reminder that Harry is going to have to travel light – wand, toothbrush and change of clothes – because as soon as he's of age Voldemort is going to declare open season on Harry Potter, set his Death Eaters to hunt him down and drag him before their Dark Lord for the coup de grace, and Harry is going to have to shift from safe house to safe house until the Horcruxes have been found and destroyed.

Horcruxes! As soon as he'd heard the word he'd instinctively he'd known that they are Dark magic, the very Darkest kind of magic, and they weren't going to be easy to destroy, not if Dumbledore's blasted right hand was anything to go by. He'd agreed with Snape – they couldn't risk letting Harry handle them, he might be fated to be Voldemort's executioner but he wasn't an experienced curse-breaker, and they'd have to find another way. Snape had suggested the Muggle way, and he had to admit that Snape knew his stuff, because the Windscale nuclear reactors hadn't been used to dispose of dangerous magical artefacts since before Snape was born - the Ministry hadn't used the place since that unfortunate fire in the '50s.

The first thing he'd done when he walked through the door was to check on Harry, and he'd been pleased to see that even in the shower the kid had both his wand and the Muggle weapon that Snape had taught him to use close at hand - Severus Snape and Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore's killer and the Boy Who Lived, thick as thieves less than a month after Dumbledore's funeral, who would've believed it? He couldn't work that one out and he'd given up trying – and he'd had to stifle a grunt of amusement when Harry had come over all solemn and Dumbledore-ish and told him that his reasons for trusting Snape were _a matter between Severus Snape and myself_.

Prowling up and down in the Dursleys' sitting room, he'd mulled briefly over what he'd seen in the Pensieve, the memory that Snape had used to convince them that he'd killed the Headmaster on Dumbledore's own orders, and he'd thought, Snape was genuinely loyal to Dumbledore, Dumbledore definitely had some kind of hold over the nasty bastard – but what could it have been? And Harry seems to have the same kind of hold over Snape, from what he's seen of the two of them together. But maybe it's no more than the prophecy - Snape is a survivor; he knows the whole of the prophecy, knows that Harry will have _power the Dark Lord knows not_, and power of a kind that Voldemort doesn't know about must be something really toxic, really deadly. And that's an encouraging thought, when the odds seem stacked so high against the side of the Light – Severus Snape, Voldemort's right-hand man, has worked out which is going to be the winning side, and he's taking care to keep sweet with the Chosen One.

When Harry comes down the stairs there's no time to waste with idle chit-chat, it's time they were off; Harry has a rendezvous in London with Snape this evening, and it's going to take a while to get there, since he takes no chances of being followed - he doesn't take any chances with the life of the Chosen One, the weapon against Voldemort.

He'd wondered why Snape wants to see Harry, it must be something really important for Snape to risk a meeting, but he hasn't been told and he hasn't asked, because it's better if he operates on a need-to-know basis - what he doesn't know he can't tell. But he can't help wondering if it's something to do with Slytherin's locket; he's made discreet inquiries at every Muggle pawnshop within five miles of Grimmauld Place, because it's the kind of thing that Mundungus Fletcher would off-load onto a Muggle for quick cash. No luck, though, but Dung will be out of Azkaban soon, and then they'll have a little chat ...

He'd held Harry firmly by the arm and they'd Apparated with dizzying speed to half a dozen locations to shake off the expected pursuit – Side-Along Apparation, because Harry wasn't yet up to Apparating to a place he'd never been to before. And then they'd nipped into the Underground and finally caught a Muggle bus, Muggle transport was a good way to check that you weren't being followed, most wizards or witches who weren't Muggle-raised had never used an automatic ticketing machine in their lives, and it was easy enough to give them the slip in a crowded railway station while they were fumbling for coins.

So now he's lurking against a wall, protected by his Invisibility Cloak and a mild Muggle-repelling charm, across the road from The Pink PussyCat Club – not a bad choice, a bar for Muggle queers in the middle of Soho is the last place that anyone is likely to be looking out for Severus Snape or Harry Potter.

But Snape is late, there's no sign of him, has he run into the Aurors? Or has he finally slipped up, has he been caught out lying to his Dark Lord? And if Voldemort has finally cottoned on to the traitor in his ranks, how long have they got before Snape breaks, tells everything he knows - and they hear the crack of a dozen Death Eaters Apparating into the street?

He can sense Harry stirring restlessly next to him – but they can't wait much longer, if Snape isn't here in one more minute, he's going to Apparate the pair of them away to safety.

Then a bus stops – and when it pulls away, Snape is standing on the footpath outside The Pink PussyCat Club, so Harry slips off his dad's old Invisibility Cloak, dodges past the traffic and walks through the front door.

He settles down to wait for Harry, and to watch every person who goes through the door, though he knows that it's really just out of long-ingrained habit, because if Snape's Death Eater mates are going to crash the party they're more likely to use the back door – and they won't knock first. Yep, if Snape's friends do turn up, the first he's likely to know of it will be the bursts of green and red light flashing through the front windows of the bar – and the terrified screams of the Muggles.

Snape's friends! He snorts a little at the thought, because there's no honour among thieves and no friendship amongst Death Eaters – and then he thinks, Snape went to an awful lot of trouble to get Lucius Malfoy's boy out of harm's way, and that's how he got suckered in to the Unbreakable Vow in the first place, don't tell me that vicious son-of-a-bitch actually thinks of Lucius Malfoy as a friend!


End file.
